November 1st Net Worth Update!

Happy November! My favourite month (October) has come and gone and with it a birthday and an anniversary. While I had hoped that September would be the last month I bled cash, October proved expensive when I had to drop $1,000 on car repairs, along with a few hundred dollars on various odds and ends for the house.

While I didn’t leave Halifax in October to go to New Brunswick, I was still busy freelancing, hosting family members almost every weekend, dog sitting my mother’s German Shepard puppy and working on the house. Here’s a list of the home maintenance tasks my husband and I completed this month:

Raked leaves, so many leaves.

Removed another tarp of brush from the backyard.

Painted the kitchen walls.

Rehung living room curtains to correct length.

Hemmed curtains in living room using my newfound skillz with the sewing machine.

A much shorter list than last month, mostly because the $1,000 car repair expense meant tapping the brakes (ha…) on buying stuff for the house. In November I plan to move forward with more projects.

Despite my car sucking my cash away this month, I still managed to bump my net worth by a decent margin. Here is a snapshot, and I’ll go into more detail below.

(If I say “my” below, I mean “our” because my husband and I have combined finances, including retirement savings.)

Net Worth: $68,388 (+3%)

It seems that my new “normal” number for net worth increases post-house purchase is around $2,000 per month, which I’m quite happy with. I’m glad to see that I can still manage to increase my net worth by this amount, even when spending hundreds of dollars on home renovation gear and car repairs. The bulk of this net worth increase came from my mortgage payment, which unlocked $615 in equity, my RRSP contributions, which totaled $550 this month plus some extra to repay my RRSP, and the fact that I managed to save most of my freelance income.

Mortgage: $246,979

I made another $1,089 payment on my mortgage this month, which uncovered around $615 in equity. I’m not in a hurry to pay down my mortgage right now, so you can expect this section of my net worth update to be pretty boring for the time being. Instead, I’m planning to build up my investment accounts.

Assets

Home: $280,000

I paid less for my home than what it was worth because my realtor is awesome and convinced the seller we were the best owners for this home. As a result, we have some instant equity.

Retirement Savings: $16,280 (+7%)

This month I made my usual $550 contribution to my retirement savings. I also contributed $422 to repay the money I borrowed from my RRSP for my closing costs (a topic for a later post). I now “owe” myself $3,697. I have the money to pay this off, and now that I’ve finally gotten my roof fixed, I’ll be able to pay it off once and for all.

TFSA Investments: $514 (-1%)

I didn’t contribute any money to this account in October because I’m focused on paying back my retirement savings and saving money for the Canadian Personal Finance Conference in Toronto. Once CPFC is over I’ll have extra money to start contributing to this account once again.

Emergency Fund: $10,030 (+1%)

I’m thinking of bumping my emergency fund up to $15,000 now that I’m a homeowner, but I need to crash test my new budget before settling on a number.

Short-Term Cash

I now have some smaller accounts that I’m using to save towards various goals like travel, home renovations, and a new car. Instead of listing them all out separately, here is a summary of where they stand:

Reno Fund: $4,131

Travel Fund: $418

Car Fund: $299

Other Money

If you’re doing the math, you know that there is some unexplained money in my net worth. I’ll tell you where that money is: in my planned spending account for taxes, mortgage payments, gas, the internet, taxes, etc.

Previous Net Worth Updates

2015

One year ago I had a net worth of $40,000. My retirement account was starting to look like a real retirement account at $12,000, my emergency fund was a nice and round $10,000, and I was in full house saving mode, with $13,875 in my house down payment fund.

2014

Two years ago I was finally getting to a point where I was comfortable with my money. I felt like I had some real cash saved, and my daily anxiety about job loss or injury was starting to subside. I had a net worth of $26,000, having just reached my goal of hitting $25,000 before age 25. My retirement account had almost $6,000 in it, and my travel fund was sitting pretty at $3,000 in preparation for my trip to Paris. I had also officially announced my plan to move to Halifax and had $2,000 in a moving fund.

Stay Up To Date

This past summer I had so many car repirs that my emergency fund now needs to be refilled(and I’m working on it) luckily I understood the importance of savings emergency fund and budget… however seems you had good time and you’re doing good work managing money!!!

Olivia

The last few months have been crazy having a new baby and moving but I finally have my first mini-emergency fund (5k) and now starting to save for going back to school! It feels so good when you finally complete one goal and get to move onto the next one 🙂

Bria Marie

Good job! Nice progress on your net work. Just curious, when you say you paid less than your home is worth, how did you determine how much it was worth? Was $280,000 the original list price? The assessed value? Or some other bench mark?

Hi Bria, that is a good question! The house was listed for $289,000, which my realtor said was a fair price based on comps. It has a current assessed value of $285,000. My husband and I went in and looked around and basically told the seller we loved it, and we planned to restore it to it’s original glory, but could only afford $270,000. Specifically we outlined how we would bring the yard back to it’s original splendor, since my husband used to run a landscaping company.

Even though the seller knew it was worth more she decided to go ahead with our offer due to our compelling story. Hence, I valued it a little higher than our offer, but still lower than the list price + assessment value.

Jessica White

Hope you will be updating your blog again soon

I'm a part time runner, yogi, local foodie and personal finance aficionado. I blog about handling money as a debt ridden millennial. [read more]

My Money Facts

Starting Debt: $37,987.65Current Debt: $0.00
I paid off my original debt in just 24 months.